


what a place to come from

by reggievass



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, Female Protagonist, Gen, He made a different call, POV Female Character, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:20:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reggievass/pseuds/reggievass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But Natalia Ivanova Romanova is tired.<br/>Tired of running around the wheel.<br/>So, she does the only thing she can think of.<br/>She steps off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what a place to come from

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't include any archive warnings because I wasn't sure what exactly it would fall under, but this fic includes: unhealthy dealing with grief, bullet wounds, attempted killing, attempted by-proxy suicide and casual reference to suicidal ideation.  
> If I've missed anything you feel I should warn for please, please let me know, and I'll add it.  
> When it comes to canon, I'm picking and choosing from the comics for Natasha's backstory and making some stuff up. Hopefully, it still fits within the confines of the film universe.

He’s tracking her.

Natasha knows.

He’s been tracking her days now, the one codenamed Hawkeye. Real name Clinton Francis Barton.

She’s not giving him a window, but he tails her. He follows. He waits.

She is tired.

She thinks no one alive in this world can know how deep-down bone marrow weary she is.

It has nothing to do with not sleeping for three days. She can go five easy. Seven with delayed reaction times. It’s only after ten that the hallucinations start.

What makes her tired is the years she’s lived, the lives.

What makes her tired is outliving everyone she ever loved.

What makes her tired is people seeing a woman in her twenties and calling her a girl when she’s lived over seventy years.

She is tired because this is her life, and it isn’t ending one day at a time.

It’s the same every year, every decade.

The organizations hunting her hide behind different acronyms, but so do the people who hire her.

Nothing changes, not really.

Regimes fall every day.

And she’s always running.

There’s a break up ahead between two buildings exposing the alley she’s running down.

Barton is perched across from it on a roof.

She knows because that’s where she would be.

He’ll expect her to dive across the break for cover.

Even if she cared about living, she wouldn’t try it. She’s done her research; she knows he can make that shot.

But Natalia Ivanova Romanova is tired.

Tired of running around the wheel.

So, she does the only thing she can think of.

She steps off.

She gives him a window. She stops running right in the break between the buildings.

The bullet would have hit her heart if she’d kept going. As it is, it blasts through her right arm near her shoulder.

He didn’t expect her to stop, why would he, and so he overshot.

She stumbles back with the force of the hit, but regains her footing quickly. She’s had worse.

There’s still a chance here for survival.

She knows in his second of confusion, she could reach cover again, or she could drop him from his perch.

What she does is center herself, hands down by her sides, feet shoulder width apart, and looks at him.

She looks because she’s curious, because she wants to see death coming.

He shifts so slightly she can just catch the movement.

After another pause, he’s up and moving closer.

She follows him with her eyes as he slides down a line to the street.

“Stupid,” she says.

He hesitates, but doesn’t stop moving towards her.

“Stupid to walk up to me like this,” she clarifies. “I could kill you.”

He stops a couple meters away. “But you aren’t going to,” he says.

“You don’t think so?”

“You stepped into my bullet.”

“Didn’t kill me.” She raises her chin even though she knows he’ll see it as proud defiance.

After all this time, all she’s feeling is impatience.

That and the bullet in her arm.

“Have another shot,” she says.

“No, thanks.”

Disappointing, but not surprising. He’d have to be far more like her to end someone this way.

He pulls the bud out of his ear and lets it dangle by the curled cord down his shoulder.

Someone’s yelling loud enough on the other end she can hear the buzz of words from where she stands.

“I’m Clint,” he says.

Even though she knew, she doesn’t say anything.

“Yeah.” He rubs his hand over the back of his head. “You already knew that didn’t you.” He’s smiling.

“Natalia,” she says.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Didn’t know that was your real name.”

She shrugs with her unshot shoulder. “It’s what I was told.”

Some emotion flashes quick across his face, but it takes her a moment to register it.

When she does, she’s angry.

“Don’t pity me, circus freak,” she snaps.

“I’m not.” He grins. “Prima ballerina.”

There are footsteps approaching from behind her. She can’t see how many, but at least five. They aren’t aiming for stealth.

But then, they don’t have to.

Clint lets his gun slide down to hang from the strap around his neck.

She realizes the safety’s on.

He reaches over his shoulder, grabs something from the bag on his back and snaps it open.

It’s a bow.

The footsteps instantly cease.

“I know it’s hard for some of you,” he says, “but let’s try to be civilized.”

He isn’t talking to her, though he never looks away from her face.

She’s split between being impressed one man can frighten so many, surprised the bow and arrow rumors were true, and disappointed this isn’t playing out at all the way she expected.

“If you want me to kill you, I will.” He speaks as if they are the only ones listening. “I promise you. I get it.”

She has no idea where he’s going with this, and it terrifies her almost as much as it excites her.

It has been so very long since anything caught her truly off guard.

“It won’t be easy, what I’m taking you back too,” he explains. “And I can’t protect you from that. But I kinda think you wouldn’t want me to anyway.”

It’s not a question, so she doesn’t respond.

“But I know what it’s like to be scared of yourself.”

She doesn’t say that she’s not because suddenly she’s not sure that it’s true.

“So if the time comes when you need taking down, I’ll take the shot,” he wraps up. “And that can be here and now, but it doesn’t have to be.”

A solitary set of footsteps comes to a stop behind her.

She hadn’t noticed anyone approaching with Clint’s monologue.

He must be as cold as she is after all. She waits for the bullet to the back of her head and wonders how Clint will feel when her blood hits his face.

“Agent Barton,” says the man behind her.

“Sir?”

“This is not the assignment.”

“I made a judgment call.” Clint pauses before adding, “Sir.”

The other man sighs.

She hears the rustling of someone reaching into a coat.

She doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t close her eyes, doesn’t swallow. She makes no sign.

Despite her inaction, Clint must see what she’s thinking. He rolls his eyes and says, “He’s not going to shoot you.”

The man behind her tosses a pair of double cuff nylon handcuffs over her head to land at her feet.

She knows what they want her to do.

Without taking her eyes off Clint, she bends over and picks them up. She slides them on and pulls the plastic tight with her teeth.

She does not wince at the fresh pain that shoots through her as she moves her arm.

Clint nods and closes the gap between them.

This close, she could break his neck even with her hands together. She isn’t entirely sure why she doesn’t.

“Let’s go,” he says, and she walks beside him without comment.

The back of the jet is crowded as they load up, but there is a careful bubble around her. Every agent but the pilot has at least one eye on her and one hand on a gun.

She’s a little flattered they brought so many to take her down.

She expects it when Clint sits down on her left close enough their thighs brush. He lays his bow across his lap, the implicit threat enough to quiet any grumbling.

When another agent sits down on her other side though, she is surprised.

“Sir,” Clint says, and she realizes this is the man from the alley.

“I’m Coulson,” the man says to her.

It sounds like a last name, so she answers in kind, “Romanova.”

He pulls a box into his lap and opens it. It takes her a moment to realize it’s a first aid kit.

She’s never seen one with the white cover and red cross that’s so well supplied. She’s used to making her own kit, and when she’s stolen from a pharmacy in a pinch, their little first aid boxes don’t pack what she’s looking for.

Coulson is doing this, she realizes, because Barton doesn’t trust the others’ control enough to loosen his grip on the bow.

She’s not sure if it should scare her, how much he distrusts his supposed teammates, or comfort her, that he’s taking this risk.

Mostly it just makes her question his sanity.

Coulson pulls out a pair of blunt tip scissors. “I’m going to cut away the fabric from your shoulder,” he says.

“Then you should know there’s a knife strapped to my upper arm.”

He tugs the fabric away as he cuts it loose from around the wound.

It pulls a little where the blood has begun to dry around the edges, and her shoulder starts bleeding freely again.

She wouldn’t be surprised if he took the chance to stick a finger in the bullet hole. She relaxes her muscles just in case.

But Coulson draws the switchblade from inside her sleeve without comment, and sets to disinfecting and dressing her arm.

He tells her everything he’s about to do before he does it.

Natasha would hate it if his voice were the least bit soft or patronizing, but it’s not. And she likes being told what’s going to be done to her instead of having to guess.

“There,” he says to signal when he’s done. “That should hold you for now. We’ll get the bullet out when we get back to HQ.”

She nods.

“I could give you a local anesthetic, but I didn’t think you’d want one.”

“No,” she says. “But thank you.”

He packs away the medical supplies neatly and slides the case beneath his seat.

The rest of the agents seem more relaxed now, as if Coulson’s approval is enough. Maybe it is.

Still, Clint doesn’t release his grip on the bow.

Natasha wouldn’t know how to relax if she felt like it. Which she doesn’t.

“You know what they say about wild cats, Barton,” Coulson says.

“What do they say about wild cats, sir?”

“Feed them once, and you never get rid of them.”

They’re talking about her, she realizes and wonders if she should be insulted.

“Couldn’t you say the same about a hawk with a broken wing?” Clint asks.

He must be talking about himself.

“No,” Coulson says. “You’re the one always lugging home wild things.”

Clint laughs.

Natasha’s not sure why it’s funny.

“Well, what do they say about spiders?” a woman seated across from them says. “Can you housetrain them, or are they wild too?”

“I’m not a spider,” Natasha says.

I’m not an animal at all, she thinks, not to be owned. Too many people have tried.

The woman looks surprised to get a response. “Ok,” she says. “Are you a widow at least?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, and it is the truth. She’s a widow twice over.

She doesn’t know where this conversation is going, but she does know that often the truth works better than any lie.

“Did you kill him?”

“Hill,” Clint warns.

Natasha would tell him she doesn’t need protecting, but she doesn’t want to alienate him.

“No,” she says not expecting them to believe her even though that’s the truth too.

“Then I’m sorry for your loss,” the woman says. “My name’s Maria Hill.”

This Natasha did not expect at all. It makes her think she may like these people if only for their continuing ability to catch her off guard.

“It was a long time ago,” she says, and before she can convince herself it’s stupid she adds, “You can call me Natasha.”

Clint makes a faint noise of protest beside her before saying, “I found her first.”

“Not a pet,” Coulson says.

“You can call me Natasha too.”

Clint preens a little beside her and finally loosens his grip on the bow.

No, she doesn’t understand these people at all, but she’s not ready to die just yet. Not anymore.

Not when things are finally getting interesting.


End file.
